Geopolitical Understandings and View of the Balkans …

[GR] “As no one can ignore the fact that this inhumanity of the Member States of the European Union –which have no borders with Turkey and have no security problems with Turkey, which have no disputes with Turkey– the attitude of these states led to the [current] impasse and burdened Greece with this issue”.

Moreover, MP Sotiropoulos noted that “Europe, as a single entity, [wa]s absent from the developments in Kosovo”⁷¹⁷, where another ‘failure’ of the CFSP was staged.

Reportedly, the CFSP was not politically objective that it did not support territorial stability of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and once again remained as empty pronouncements. Thus, “Europe [wa]s extremely friendly to Muslims, [and]

completely hostile to Kurds”⁷¹⁸. By designating Turkey as the joint point of reference, the analogy between a religious belief and an ethnos was furthered by MP Arapi-Karagianni: “Nowadays, in the neighboring Balkan countries, some war scenes unfold, with Turkey's Muslim bow which she wants to portray as a future threat”⁷¹⁹.

avoidance of intervention in the political events, particularly, in the Balkans following the collapse of communism. Accordingly, the EU was not a union aiming for humanitarian purposes such as alleviating the aggression in Bosnia and Kosovo. It was considered “a global neo-liberal market”⁷²² where promoting solidarity among members and citizens was disregarded. The European “progress on economy [wa]s not commensurate with the progress in Europe's democratic institutions, foreign policy, security and defense”⁷²³. As Konstantopoulos put it, the European project had largely consisted of being a huge economic power with a global reach, and was nothing else⁷²⁴:

[GR] “However, this global economic role should also be matched by a political role in the settlement of international problems and the response to international crises. And of course it should be a political role that seeks to pursue an international policy based on the principles of peace, solidarity and cooperation. Is there anyone in this Chamber who can seriously claim that the European Union has a Common Foreign Policy based on the principles of International Law and guarantees of democratic protection?”.

In the Eastern part of the Aegean, Europe was not subject to any criticisms at the union-level but state-union-level. It was repeatedly iterated that Balkans were the bleeding wound in the country’s foreign policy, which was another ‘hearth breaking region of political ignorance’. The world was employing double standards against the Kosovans who were yet not recognized, though their differences in religion, language, and ethnicity vis-à-vis the Serbs. The European hypocrisy of diplomacy witnessed the ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Bosnia and Kosova by Serbia without any intervention.

The Turkish MP Kansu suggested that Turkey “had to have friendly and allied countries against Greece [both] in Balkans and on her way of connecting with Europe”⁷²⁵. Additionally, he associated Serbia’s freedom of such an appalling conduct with the exceptional support of Greece and her implicit tactics in destabilizing Albania.

Supposedly, Greece had tacitly organized an armed uprising in Albenia, particularly by making use of the banking crisis of 1997 which resulted in the complete destruction of the Albenian armed forces. And shortly afterwards, “in Tirana, power fell into the hands of pro-Greek militants”⁷²⁶. The Kosovans, therefore, had been left alone in both military and political aspects. Some European countries’ attribution of terrorist organization to the Kosovo Liberation Army was an evidence of overt discrimination

722 Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, (05.03.1999): 5047. [Tsovolas, DIKKI, the then MP].

723 Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, (17.02.1999): 4535. [Pachtas, PASOK, the then Deputy Minister for Economic Affairs].

724 Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, (16.02.1999): 4463. [Konstantopoulos, SYN, the then MP].

725 Minutes of Grand National Assembly of Turkey, (08.10.1998): 372. [Kansu, FP, the then MP].

726 ibid. [Kansu, FP, the then MP].

against nations and encouraged the Serbs before the Kosovans⁷²⁷. In Kansu’s words;

“it was visible that behind the pogrom and ethnic cleansing, which occurred in Bosnia before the Balkans and now in Kosovo, was the alliance of Serbia, Greece, and Russia”⁷²⁸. In a similar vein, MP Yazıcıoğlu claimed that there was ‘an orthodox alliance’ between Serbia and Greece which was the main responsible for the turmoil and massacres in the region. Both countries were allegedly in an effort to expand their political clout and to split Albenia with ethnic cleansing; since Greece was trying to capture the mining zones located in her north by claiming minority rights for the Greeks in Albenia on the one hand, and Serbia was trying to dominate water resources on her south on the other⁷²⁹.

Contrarily, in the Greek parliament, the government was suggested by the MP Tsovolas to pursue a foreign policy that would “strengthen Greece's relations with the Kurdish nation, as well as, with the neighboring countries of Turkey, with whom it ha[d] a permanent rivalry” that they would function as deterrent powers, preventing

“the Turks even to think of a hot spot in the Aegean and Cyprus”⁷³⁰. Supposedly, Greece was being suffered from the ‘Turkish threat’ for a long time and the Greek-Kurdish alliance was of special importance that “to lose a traditional ally-people, [who were] struggling for their self-empowerment and could be a deterrent to Turkish aggression and expansiveness”⁷³¹ would be disastrous in the Greek foreign policy.

It was also underscored that, throughout the years, the Turkish forces had overseen and participated in ‘massacres and genocides’ that were systematically overlooked by both the EU and NATO. In this regard, hypocrisy and duplicity were visible particularly in NATO’s conduct of policy toward Turkey and Serbia. While for Kosovo, NATO –employing double standards– declared to send forces⁷³² and Europe mobilized for rapid intervention, none dealt with “the massacres and the displacement

727 ibid, 374. [Kansu, FP, the then MP].

728 ibid. [Kansu, FP, the then MP].

729 Minutes of Grand National Assembly of Turkey, (08.10.1998): 379. [Muhsin Yazicioğlu, BBP, the then MP].

730 Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, (12.03.1999): 5291. [Tsovolas, DIKKI, the then MP].

731 Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, (16.02.1999): 4468. [Tsovolas, DIKKI, the then MP].

732 Minutes of the Hellenic Parliament, (17.02.1999): 4527. [Tsovolas, DIKKI, the then MP].

of thousands of Kurdish villages and millions of migrants for fifteen years”⁷³³. As maintained in the excerpt from MP Korakas below⁷³⁴:

[GR] “Thus, while they’re preparing, for these days, intervention in Kosovo against Yugoslavia, in order to protect the Albanians by provocatively strengthening the so-called Liberation Army by all means, they’re arming Turkey to the teeth in the genocide against the Kurdish people and in the oppression against the Turkish people. We should not forget [that] right now in Turkey the Turkish people themselves suffer hardships”.

Allegedly, Turkey was continuously summiting heinous crimes not only against her neighbours but also against her oppressed peoples who were long been subject to harsh and authoritarian treatment of the state apparatus.